1) Obama's name does not appear anywhere in the story. He had no more to do with HP than you. You could just as well call it the JEDIGALT layoffs.

2) HP's problems are HP's creation. Actually they had 2 CEOs in a row that got bounced pretty quickly. Here is one that does mention Obama http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/10/hp-ceo-were-screwed-... in passing.3) Giving away printers to get consumers to pay big markups on your ink and branded paper only works for so long. (The John Young era). People eventually figure out that the cartridges can be refilled and there is nothing special about HP branded paper.4) The business model of trying to become a monopoly (The Carly Fiorina era) only matters if that particular market is worth monopolizing. Retail PC sales (the idea behind buying Compaq) was not worth it.5) Trying to monopolize services (buying DEC and EDS) is only going to get you a position competing with every other IT company on the planet with nothing special (The Leo Apotheker Era).6) In general, charging big markups on stuff you don't actually make (buying everything from Hon Hai and such) leaves you with a product line of "noting special" and "me-too".7) The last invention of note to come out of HP labs was the optical mouse. That was a while ago.8) HP research spent a bunch of money on LED technology and got out of it just when LED technology started to take off. They dropped a bundle on Field Emission Displays and got nothing.9) HP has had a long run of paying a premium to buy other companies (add Palm to the list above) and turning them into nothing.

Net/net an unproductive research lab, a string of high dollar acquisitions that resulted in nothing, a philosophy of buying everything from Asia and just putting your name on it, and the aging of their golden goose in the personal printer market, yep! sound like Obama's doing.

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